The present disclosure relates to online education. More particularly, the present disclosure relates to various techniques for award incentives for facilitating collaborative, social online education.
Online education is increasing in popularity and user participation. The strength and appeal of online education is that users do not have to be in the same location, either physically or academically, in order to collaborate and learn. However, this strength is undermined by existing limitations in online learning platforms.
Despite advances in online education techniques, it remains problematic to engage in discussions and/or collaborations focused on non-textual material in online discussion forums, chat rooms, discussion walls, etc. It also remains problematic to engage in online video presentations and/or online educational videos. For example, many of today's online educational videos do not capture student attention for long (or at all), and often come across as being impersonal or mechanical. Such educational videos typically have to choose between showing an instructor, speaking to a camera (lecture style), or featuring the problem at hand, with instruction, if any is given, as a voiceover (documentary style). None of these styles is conducive to learning, particularly math-related learning. For example, in educational videos providing math instruction via the documentary style, students may need to view problems and equations (presented in the educational video) in order to follow along fully, and are therefore unable to simultaneously or concurrently observe the visual cues of the Presenter. As a result, the student's eye never quite knows where to “rest”. Such issues are detrimental to the online learning experience, particularly in situations involving concepts that need to be illustrated in order to be understood and/or discussed.